Volume 27, Issue 1

This paper provides a diachronic typology of what we call ‘heterogeneous plurals’, an overarching term comprising associative plurals (expressions meaning X [person] & company) and similative plurals (expressions meaning X and similar entities). Based on a 110-language sample, we identify the most recurrent sources of these two types of plurals by means of various types of evidence (homophony/identity, internal reconstruction, comparison with cognate languages). The two types of plurals develop out of different source types: while the sources of associative plurals include elements that work as set constructors (plural anaphoric elements, plural possessives, names meaning ‘group’), those of similative plurals comprise elements with vague reference such as interrogative/indefinite items or uncertainty markers. There are also a few source types that may develop into both associative and similative plurals, such as connectives (‘and/with’) and universal quantifiers (‘every/all’). The differences in the diachronic pathways leading to the two types of plurals are explained in terms of the different referential properties of the nominal bases from which they are formed (proper names/kin terms vs. common nouns), but also taking into account the typical discourse contexts in which the two types of plurals are employed.

Semantic variation in the cutting and breaking domain has been shown to be constrained across languages in a previous typological study, but it was unclear whether Japanese was an outlier in this domain. Here we revisit cutting and breaking in the Japonic language area by collecting new naming data for 40 videoclips depicting cutting and breaking events in Standard Japanese, the highly divergent Tohoku dialects, as well as four related Ryukyuan languages (Amami, Okinawa, Miyako and Yaeyama). We find that the Japonic languages recapitulate the same semantic dimensions attested in the previous typological study, confirming that semantic variation in the domain of cutting and breaking is indeed cross-linguistically constrained. We then compare our new Japonic data to previously collected Germanic data and find that, in general, related languages resemble each other more than unrelated languages, and that the Japonic languages resemble each other more than the Germanic languages do. Nevertheless, English resembles all of the Japonic languages more than it resembles Swedish. Together, these findings show that the rate and extent of semantic change can differ between language families, indicating the existence of lineage-specific developments on top of universal cross-linguistic constraints.

This article addresses the heretofore unacknowledged similarity of mirative-like and contrastive-focus-like functions by describing data from Denjongke (Tibetic, sip), Bih (Chamic, Vietnam, ibh) and Nepali (Indo-Aryan, nep). The similarity between mirative-like and contrastive-focus-like functions in the aforementioned languages is captured by the notion of something being brought to the forefront of attention. Mirative-like semantics are shown to be epiphenomenal to attention-oriented phenomena, and the functional domain in which the morphemes operate is shown to be attention rather than knowledge structure. The morphemes in the study are described in terms of three parameters, which are put forward as potentially useful tools for describing similar morphemes in other languages: speaker versus addressee orientation, clausal versus phrasal scope, and anaphoric versus cataphoric use. The first two parameters form a fourfold table in which the heuristically named “mirative-like function” has clausal scope and is speaker-oriented (i.e. speaker signals that something has come to the forefront of their attention). “Contrastive-focus-like function”, on the other hand, has phrasal scope and is addressee-oriented (i.e. speaker intends to bring something to the forefront of the addressee’s attention). Cognitively, contrastive-focus-like function is shown to establish joint attention.

We provide a discussion of some of the challenges in using statistical methods to investigate the morphology-syntax distinction cross-linguistically. The paper is structured around three problems related to the morphology-syntax distinction: (i) the boundary strength problem; (ii) the composition problem; (iii) the architectural problem. The boundary strength problem refers to the possibility that languages vary in terms of how distinct morphology and syntax are or the degree to which morphology is autonomous. The composition problem refers to the possibility that languages vary in terms of how they distinguish morphology and syntax: what types of properties distinguish the two systems. The architecture problem refers to the possibility that languages vary in terms of whether a global distinction between morphology and syntax is motivated at all and the possibility that languages might partition phenomena in different ways. This paper is concerned with providing an overarching review of the methodological problems involved in addressing these three issues. We illustrate the problems using three statistical methods: correlation matrices, random forests with different choices for the dependent variable, and hierarchical clustering with validation techniques.

This article deals with estimative (also called ‘tropative’) constructions meaning ‘find/consider X to be Y ’, where Y stands for a noun or an adjective. It systematically investigates morphological estimatives and their relationship to causative, applicative and denominal derivations from synchronic and diachronic perspectives. In addition, the article presents a survey of periphrastic estimative strategies in the world’s languages.